ART: RICHARD Y. INSIDE THIS ISSUE: Welcome
2
Jennifer! Courageous are we…, Lost Love The Serious Moonlight, Smile, Ocean Spray
3
I hurt so bad,
4
Grandparents, LGBTQ folks in the military Legal Advice from Warrior K
5
PLRA: Prison Litigation Reform Act
6
We need to come together
7
Inspired by Greek History
8
Last Chance! Join the
9
6
Leadership Circle! Addresses, Black & Pink Art!
10
M AY 2 0 1 1 I S S U E
Dear friends, Easter and Passover have both come to a close and the beautiful rituals of the Christians and Jews have lifted up those who revere them. I hope those of you who practice either tradition have found the queer beauty available for our GLBTQ family in both the Exodus liberation story of Passover and the radical wall/boundary smashing message available in the resurrection story. These holidays can speak to us, I hope you have been able to hear them. Black and Pink's newsletter has now been ongoing without interruption for over a year. This is an incredibly exciting moment for us. We have gotten in over 25 personal nominations from incarcerated people to sit on the Leadership Circle. Our ―free world‖ volunteers continue to grow and our connection to people is ever strengthening our capacity as a family. We are striving to support ourselves financially and any ideas you have that you would like to share we would be appreciative. It is because of the wisdom of everyone that we are able to be where we are today. This May 1st is the 125th Anniversary of the Haymarket affair. On this day in 1886 nearly half a million workers around the country rallied, marched, and protested for the agreed upon 8hour work day. The Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions had set May 1st as the day that an 8-hour work day would become the national standard. In Chicago, community organizing anarchists Albert and Lucy Parsons, led the largest protests of the day with 90,000 people marching down the streets of Chicago. They were ready to make their demands heard and there was no compromising to be done! Workers in Chicago were on strike as this was going on and on May 4th during a rally a bomb exploded that killed a police officer and injured a large number of other people, cops and protesters alike. While it has been made abundantly clear that the bomb was set off by the company thugs, many still believe that that the disaster and deaths of the day was the responsibility of the anarchists who organized the rally. Five of the anarchists involved with the organizing that day were railroaded through a sham trial (something many of you are familiar with) and put to death in November of 1887. The men executed were August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel. As they were led out to be hanged they sang together the Marseillaise, the song of the international revolutionary movement and as he was about to die August Spies cried out, ―The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today!‖ He wanted to executioners to know that the movement would continue on and victory would turn the five men into martyrs, he was right. The gifts of anarchist organizing are essential for us as queer people and people impacted by the prison industrial complex. Black and Pink began as an explicitly anarchist organizing effort and continues to hold strong to anarchist principles. Kuwasi Balagoon, who we shared history about a few issues ago, was a queer New Afrikan anarchist who wrote, ―With anarchy, the society as a whole not only maintains itself at an equal expense to all, but progresses in a creative process unhindered by any class, caste or party.‖ Those of us who have known oppression and who are actively resisting the violence of oppression can find voice and power through an anarchist revolutionary moment. As LGBTQ people we need to recognize that our history is intertwined with anarchist movements. It was Alexander Berkman, anarchist organizer in the late 19th Century/early 20th Century, who wrote the first public celebration of same-sex sexuality and romance as political acts of subversion. Berkman wrote specifically about the role of same-sex/ queer love for incarcerated people. This anarchist history is our LGBTQ history! So please celebrate May Day this year and do so knowing that our movements are connected and indeed, once there were no prisons, that day will come again! -Jason